Susan Meister: Better ideas for Fort Ord

The Herald's story on Monday about Monterey Institute for International Studies students competing to formulate ideas for an entrepreneurial project that would represent the best use of Fort Ord lands proves the age-old belief that from the mouths of babes come pearls of wisdom.

The students who participated in this imaginative competition described one of their best ideas as having "a minor impact on water and habitat while helping visitors to the area ... to bring awareness of the beauty that is in your backyard."

This is not just an endorsement of a vision for economic development. It is a statement of values that has been conspicuously lacking in the Monterey Downs debate, the project that some county supervisors have apparently embraced as their vision of economic development. It has consumed the resources, time and share of mind of our governing bodies for too long.

By now, the issues raised by Monterey Downs are familiar: a project that originated with the possibility that Monterey County might be the site of the 2012 Olympic Games' equestrian events that did not materialize.

Then came the idea of a permanent horse training facility that on its own was unfinanceable, which in turn morphed into a racetrack as part of the plan that includes a hotel (presumably for all the visitors who come to watch horse racing), and 1,500 housing units, some percentage of which would be low income (presumably for the mostly low-income jobs that the development would produce).

Under this plan, the current easy access to the hiking and mountain biking trails beloved by county residents would be closed, acres of pristine Fort Ord lands would be given over to the development, while the already despoiled acreage would remain.

The city of Seaside, which is hoping to annex this project to enlarge its tax base, would have to find new water to supply this 550-acre development. This is a huge — perhaps insurmountable — problem. If the Monterey Downs project were to be fully built out and occupied, it would be larger than Carmel.

Clearly, Seaside is counting on tax income from a centerpiece of the development, the racetrack, but there are huge problems with this idea. Racetracks are a failing business model, steadily losing customers to off-track betting sites such as the one that was just added to the poker room in Salinas.

Worse, anyone who followed the New York Times series on the cruelty of the horse racing industry learned that it is a culture of greed and corruption, abetted by unscrupulous veterinarians who give horses IV injections of potent drugs to mask pain and injuries. This results in the tragic loss of 24 horses a day on U.S. racetracks, horses that break down or are destroyed, often literally to be thrown out with the trash.

Even if there was a ghost of a chance that people would actually travel to Seaside to a racetrack when they are not doing it in other localities, do the residents of Monterey County want to support this cruelty?

It is time that voters begin to openly question why a project as flawed as Monterey Downs has consumed the time and financial resources that could be far better applied to the ideas that the MIIS students came up with, which curiously follow closely those in a 2011 Stanford Research Institute report commissioned by the Board of Supervisors. This report, prepared by professionals with years of experience, detailed how the county's assets could best be used as a basis for a new economic development vision. Almost all dealt with eco-recreation and agri-tourism in some form. None of these recommendations appears to have been adopted, though were they to be, there would be considerable multi-constituency support for them.

Monterey Downs is antithetical to the values that county residents have come to treasure. The MIIS students got it right on this front while their elected elders continue in confusion to write and rewrite the Monterey Downs plan at taxpayer cost. It's time for us, the voters, to respect what the students have given us—a call to action that we can embrace as a community and then hand back to them as their sacred inheritance.

It's time for us to decide—and articulate— that values matter as least as much as tax revenue.

Susan Meister is a journalist specializing in medical issues. She lives in Pebble Beach and writes regularly for this page.